


The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker - deleted scene

by Laurenjames



Series: The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Death, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Murder, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29219658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurenjames/pseuds/Laurenjames
Summary: This is a deleted scene from the published novel The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker by Lauren James“Congratulations, new kid. Welcome to the afterlife.”What if death is only the beginning?When Harriet Stoker dies after falling from a balcony in a long-abandoned building, she discovers a world of ghosts with magical powers – shape-shifting, hypnosis, even the ability to possess the living.Felix, Kasper, Rima and Leah welcome her into their world, eager to make friends with the new arrival. Yet Harriet is more interested in unleashing her own power, even if it means destroying everyone around her. But when all of eternity is at stake, the afterlife can be a dangerous place to make an enemy.Word count: 93,000 Ages 14+
Relationships: Harriet Stoker/Kasper Jedynak, Kasper Jedynak/Felix Anekwe
Series: The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145354
Comments: 1





	The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker - deleted scene

**Author's Note:**

> I found some old files from 2016, when I was first drafting my new novel. It turns out there was a whole plotline that was cut for clarity - originally there had been a mysterious other place where ghosts could go, called the After. That got removed in the end, but I thought if might be interesting to share for anyone who's read the book. If you haven't, this might not make much sense!

“Do you trade spirits?” Harriet asked.

The guy let out a laugh. “Not for anything you can offer, princess.”

“What do you want?” She twisted a curl of hair around her finger, tilting her head sweetly at him.

He snorted. “Unless you can cross over, nothing from you.”

“Cross over?”

He sighed. He was clearly almost done with Harriet, and had his ear to the wall again. “To the After.”

She couldn’t not ask. “The After?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not an intro class. The _afterlife_? Like, _death_?”

Harriet’s pride almost stopped her from saying that she had thought that this _was_ the afterlife. “But -” 

She stopped. He was glaring at her. She would have to ask someone else. “Thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it,” she said, instead. 

“Whatever,” he muttered, and stuck his head into the plasterboard. "Go and ask Jonesy, and stop bothering me."

Harriet brushed back her hair, straightened her shoulders, and went to find Jonesy. 

In Room 3C she found a muscular white boy stretched out on a bed frame. Curled up on the opposite end of the bed, top and tail, was a dark-haired girl. They were passing back and forth a pale mouse spirit, so pale that it was nearly transparent. 

“Sup, newbie,” the guy, whom she assumed was Jonesy, said. He must have been some kind of wrestler when he was alive, because he really was enormous. To her relief, he didn’t look as sleazy as the rat hunter had implied. He was kind of cute, actually – in a dim looking way. She would be able to flirt her way into obtaining a rat spirit in minutes.

“Hi. I was told you do trades?” Her eyes followed the mouse as they passed it between them. They were inhaling energy from it each time, she realised. Harriet wondered whether it was the ghost equivalent of doing drugs.

She really, really wanted to ask for a drag.

“What do you need, dude?” Jonesy said.

“Well, I haven’t worked out what my power is yet, and I was wondering -”

“Go and see Qi,” he interrupted. “She will help you for free. Don’t let Jonesy scam you.” 

Harriet blinked at him. She had thought that he was Jonesy. The girl said, gruffly offended, “ _Hey_.”

The guy tilted his head and grinned at her. “You know it’s true.”

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” she admitted. She had a thickly Spanish accent. 

“Actually, I’ve already been to see Qi. She couldn’t help me.” 

“Oh?” the girl, Jonesy, said. She sat up, studying Harriet. “That is very unusual, for Qi.” 

Not Spanish, she decided. Jonesy was Portuguese. Maybe Brazilian. “Long story. Can you help me instead?”

She tilted her head. “You have tried a rat?”

“Yeah, it didn’t do anything, and Qi didn’t wanna try again in case-”

“It won’t work a second time,” the guy said.

“Let her speak.” 

The guy shrugged and crossed his arms, muscles bulging. Harriet wondered if he was Jonesy’s toy boy or her bodyguard – or both. 

“I was hoping you could get me another rat,” she finished, already disappointed. They were going to say no, just like Rima had. 

“It won’t work,” he repeated. 

“Yes, it probably won’t,” Jonesy agreed. “We can try something else though.”

“What did you have in mind?” Harriet said, stepping closer. 

“Are you a local? Do your family live nearby?”

Harriet took a step forwards. “Yeah . . ?”

Jonesy nodded thoughtfully. “We could ask around, then. See if anyone in your family knows what your power is.”

Her bodyguard pulled a face at her. “Any excuse to go into the After.”

Jonesy pouted, and inspected her nails. 

“I don’t actually know what _the After_ is,” Harriet admitted.

“It’s the next stage,” she said. “Where we go when we disintegrate. I can speak to the people there.”

Harriet turned to her, alert. “What’s it like? How do you talk to them? Can you speak to anyone? From anywhere?”

“Whoa,” Jonesy said, laughing. She bent her head to breath in the last of the mouse, eyes closing as she absorbed it. “I don’t know what it’s like, exactly. None of them want to say. But . . . it’s bad, I think. I hear their voices in my head, but sometimes it’s so bad that they can barely speak. They always, _always_ beg me to bring them back to the world.”

She had explained this before, Harriet realised. Everyone must ask her this. 

“What do they say?” 

“They’re waiting.”

“Waiting? What for?”

“For whatever is happening to them to be over, or to begin – I don’t know. It’s some kind of limbo. Some of the dead I’ve spoken to have been in the After for thousands of years, and none of them will tell me what’s happening to them, just that they would give anything for it to be over. They always warn me to keep my energy levels high for as long as possible, whatever it takes. Because anything is better than going to the After. That’s why I started the black market – because I wanted to make sure I could ensure I never ran out of energy, by always having a way to trade for it.”

Harriet could picture it. Endless ghosts, drifting in place. Were they being tortured? Burning in an eternal fire? Or something worse? 

“Why don’t they tell you what is happening there?” 

“I don’t think they are allowed.” 

Harriet’s eyes widened. Who was stopping them? 

“Anyway,” Jonesy said, shrugging, like this wasn’t the worst thing Harriet had ever heard. “I was thinking that I could try to find someone in your family. Their powers might be the same as yours. You got any family who died around here?” 

“My parents,” she said, quietly. 

“Ah, perfect!” Jonesy said, and then, when her bodyguard nudged her, “I mean, er, soz.”

“It was only six years ago, though. They might still be ghosts. They died in hospital.”

Her mum and dad had died when Harriet was twelve. They had been gone out to dinner one night to a seafood restaurant, and come home with food poisoning. They’d slept for nearly twenty-four hours, and when they had woken up neither of them had been able to breathe properly. Her dad told her to call them an ambulance. They had both died within minutes.

“Six years is a long time for a ghost. There’s a lot of deaths in a hospital, giving off energy, but there’s also a lot of other ghosts to compete against. It could have gone either way. It’s probably worth a try.”

Harriet nodded decisively. “What do you want from me in exchange for trying?”

Jonesy licked her lips, looking Harriet up and down. “Let’s just say you’ll owe me a favour. A first use of your power, whatever it turns out to be.” 

Harriet bent her head, considering this. It was risky, agreeing to an unknown favour. But now she’d met Jonesy, she thought she could handle her. If she asked for something unreasonable, she’d be able to negotiate her out of it. Probably. 

Harriet looked at the guy. “Should I trust her?”

Jonesy made an impressed, disbelieving noise when the bodyguard stared at her, apparently evaluating her trustworthiness.

“Yeah. It’s worth it, if it works,” he said eventually. 

“Fine,” Harriet said. “Do it.”

Once she had worked out what her power was, then the possibilities were endless. Jonesy seemed to think that she would have a power worth trading for. Even if her power ended up being something useless, like Rima’s, she would still be able to trade with it for more useful things. She would be able to work out a way to leave the building, just like she wanted. Someone somewhere here must know of a way to leave. She just had to find them.

Jonesy gestured to her to sit. “Tell me everything you know about your parents’ deaths.”

When it happened, it was with almost no ceremony. Jonesy closed her eyes, and didn’t open them again for forty-five minutes. Harriet and the bodyguard made awkward small talk – he had been a rower, not a wrestler; he had been studying Art History; and he’d been seventh in line for a peerage when he had died - and watched Jonesy’s eyes move beneath her eyelids. 

When Harriet was certain that the girl must have died, or dropped into a ghostly coma forever, she opened her eyes again and said, “No luck.”

“You didn’t find them?” Harriet’s mouth was dry. 

“They’re not in the After yet. I checked with some of the other dead from the hospital, and they’re still ghosts. I can’t get in touch with them. Sorry.” Jonesy looked tired. Before, she had been bright with the glow of the mouse’s energy. Now her energy had dimmed.

Harriet slumped. She was glad they weren’t stuck in the After, but she had really wanted to know what her power was. “Can we try someone else? My granddad died before I was born – I bet he’s in the After by now. He died in the same hospital.”

As far as she could remember, he had been recovering from dental surgery and accidentally overdosed on his medication. Her gran had really had the worst luck. First him, then her son and daughter-in-law, now Harriet. Everyone around her seemed to die. 

Jonesy narrowed her eyes at her. “I’ve already put the work in. What’s to say I’ll get anything out of this that’s worth two attempts?”

“Please,” she said, unable to think of a reason. “I promise I’ll do anything.”

“Go on,” the rower said, to Harriet’s surprise. “I’ve got a good feeling about this one. She’s full of power. I want a favour off her too.”

Jonesy closed her eyes for a second, and then nodded. “Yeah, all right. I’ll go again for you.”

She wrapped her hand in her hair, rubbing it between her fingers as she focussed. Her eyes closed and her hand went limp and dropped into her lap.

Harriet met his eye. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. “Don’t thank me until it actually works. There is something you can do in exchange, though.”

“What do you want?” she asked, already wary. 

“Well . . . you don’t happen to know the latest Sky Blues league rankings, do you?” 

When Jonesy woke up, she was almost grey with exhaustion. 

“What did you find?” Harriet asked. 

She licked her dry lips, clearing her throat. “Give me a minute.”

The guy stood up. “I’ll get you another mouse.”

When he left the room, Jonesy opened her eyes and glared at Harriet. “I didn’t want to say this in front of him because he gets upset, but I think you should piss off, okay?”

Harriet blinked. “What?” She’d thought she had a grasp on Jonesy’s personality, but her voice was harsh now. Maybe she’d underestimated her.

“You should stop trying to find your power. Right now. This isn’t gonna work out the way you want it to.”

“What are you talking about? Did you find my granddad?”

Jonesy shook her head. “I found him. And I want you out of here. You can forget your favour. I don’t want you using the black market ever again.”

Confusion turned to fury. “What? We made a deal! You can’t do that to me! Tell me what he said!”

“Get the fuck out of my room,” Jonesy hissed. “We’re done.”

Harriet stood up, fists clenched tightly. She pictured herself punching Jonesy. She replayed the image in her mind, turning it over and over like a boiled sweet on her tongue, embellishing it, adding spit balls and bite marks and clawed fingernails separating skin from flesh. 

She stared at Jonesy, tearing her apart in her mind. And then she set the image free. 

She smiled. 

“Fine,” she said, calm. Hiding her teeth and claws and nails. “Everyone warned me that you’re too sleazy to trust. I guess they were right.” 

She turned and left the room, pushing past Jonesy’s bodyguard, who was holding a wriggling mouse spirit in one hand.

“I’m taking this with me,” she told him, and tugged it out of his loose, surprised fist on her way past. “Thanks for nothing.” 

She was too eager to be ashamed. As soon as she had turned the corner of the corridor, she absorbed the mouse, slumping against the wall as its energy powered through her veins. She tried to force it to manifest into some kind of power, but once again, nothing happened. 

The anger churning in her stomach amplified. Another lost cause. She didn’t want to believe that everyone in Mulcture Hall was purposefully working against her, but it was growing impossible to believe otherwise. She wasn’t in hell yet, but she might as well be.

*

Harriet raced down the stairs, two at a time. A living psychic was here! How had Rima thought of calling one before her?

Her gran was waiting to speak to her. And this time, she would be able to hear Harriet. What was she going to say to her? How could she possibly explain everything which had happened?

In the entrance hall, a blonde human was talking on the phone. Leah and Felix were standing by her, listening. Kasper was at the other end of the room, watching from a distance. 

“-I just think that she’s going to -” Harriet heard Felix say, as she drew nearer. 

“Harriet!” Leah said, loudly, as Rima landed on the bannister in an undignified flapping of wings, twisting back into human form.

Felix stopped talking abruptly. 

Unaware, the psychic dutifully repeated Felix’s words: “ _I just think that_ _she’s going to_. . . What was the rest? No, not you, Mrs. Stoker.”

“Harriet is here,” Felix said to the woman, not taking his eyes off Harriet. Harriet realised that she was trembling.

The psychic jerked her head up, smiling. “Excellent! Helen, your granddaughter is ready to speak to you now. I must remind you before the conversation begins that your credit card will be charged at a standard rate of one pound fifty per minute for the entire duration of the séance, plus standard network rates.”

Harriet moved close enough to hear her grandmother’s familiar voice say, “ _I understand_.” She pinned her hand against her side, to hide the way she was shaking. 

“Excellent. Then I will convey her first message now. Harriet, what would you like to say to your grandmother?”

Harriet took a deep breath. “Hi, nana. I’ve missed you.”

“ _I’ve missed you too, darling_ ,” her gran replied, after the psychic had repeated her words.

“How is your ankle?”

“ _The doctor removed the cast yesterday_ ,” she said. “ _Harriet, what happened to you_?”

“I was taking photographs of the building, and tripped.” That day felt like a lifetime ago now. Harriet couldn’t remember now, what it had felt like to be that student, concerned with nothing more than getting a good grade on her Photography coursework. That person didn’t feel like Harriet at all anymore.

Everything had changed.

“ _I hear you’ve been . . . having trouble coping with your death, my darling_. _Would you like to talk about that?_ ”

Harriet twisted and glared at Felix. He adjusted his glasses, shoulders curling in. 

_He’d told her._ He’d told her grandmother what Harriet had done. Harriet was abruptly mortified. Seeing the last few days through the lens of her grandmother’s judgement, she was suddenly ashamed, for the first time. She had turned into someone she wasn’t sure her grandmother would even recognise. 

“I’ve been trying to come home to you, nana. I want to be there to help you, while your ankle is healing.”

“ _Harriet, my darling, I don’t need you to come home. All I need from you is for you to rest in peace.”_

Harriet winced. It was painful to hear her say that. She must be lying, to make Harriet feel better. It was obvious to anyone how much her gran must be struggling on her own. She’d lost her husband, son and granddaughter. She was completely alone. It must be hell on earth.

“You don’t have to lie, nana. I know it must be hard. It won’t be long before I’m home, I promise. I’m so close.”

“ _Harriet, you’re not listening. I’m going to be absolutely fine. Social services have organised a carer to help me twice a week. You need to move on, love. You can’t spend all your time worrying about me. I’m so, so distraught that you’ve died – and I know you must be struggling to accept it too. But you need to calm down. If you take some time to adjust, you’ll see that all of this nonsense is silly. There’s no reason for you to come home.”_

“No!” Harriet said, shaking her head. She wished desperately that she’d been in the entrance hall when the psychic had arrived, so Felix had never had a chance to whisper his lies to her grandmother. Whatever he’d said to her, it had changed things. It had planted ideas in her head that didn’t give the full story. “Nana, I’m coming home. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you - for us!”

_“Don’t say that, Harriet. Never justify what you’ve done in my name. I would never support your actions. I think you’ve always known that, deep down.”_

“ _Nana._ ”

This was wrong. This was all wrong. Fucking _Felix._

Harriet stepped up to the psychic, so close that their noses would be touching, if she could see her. The woman stared past her, blindly waiting for her next message. 

Rima said, warningly, “Harriet . . . what are you doing?”

“Come near me, Rima, and I’ll rip your throat out.”

No one moved. 

What was she even working towards, anymore? Did she really want to go back to being a human? Did she even care about her old life, now that she’d obtained something so much better?

Harriet whispered in the psychic’s ear, calm and gentle, “Tell her that I’m coming home. That nothing on Earth is going to stop me. And when I’m back with her, she’ll see that this was all worth it.” 

She waited until the psychic had repeated the message, and then bit into her neck, sucking down rich, thick blood. 

Felix lunged towards her, pressing instructions into her mind: _Stop it. Let go of her. Go to sleep-_ Without looking, Harriet pressed her hand to his chest, reflecting his command back at him. His knees crumpled beneath him as he dropped to the floor. On the other side of the room, Kasper swore and ran towards them. 

The human was screaming in her arms, blood dripping down her neck as Harriet tore into her skin. 

Rima twisted into a snake and plunged fangs which dripped venom into her shoulder. 

Turning herself invisible, Harriet tore the snake away, flesh clinging to its teeth, and used it to whip Kasper when he flew at her. The psychic slumped to the ground. 

Kasper fell back as Rima twisted into a mouse, escaping from Harriet’s grip as the psychic’s ghost flickered into sight above her corpse. The woman backed away, a look of horror crossing her face. 

“What is happening?” she screamed, as Kasper leapt onto Harriet’s back, dragging her to the ground. 

The psychic collapsed into dust, like Oscar had done only days before.

Immediately, Harriet could feel the psychic’s power manifesting itself, sweeping through her veins as the stolen talent tested the strength of its new owner. The psychic had been strong when she was alive, able to sense ghosts even then. Whatever her power was, it was going to be good. She toyed with it, wondering what it was. There was – something. Something new.

It made her feel like she was seeing double. She was still in the entrance hall of Mulcture Hall, but it was different now, half-solid and half-mist.

Layered through the foyer were the walls of other buildings. Tiny houses and huts were stacked through each other, concrete walls intersecting brick walls intersecting wooden walls intersecting wattle and daub – centuries of architecture filling the same plot of land. The buildings crowed together across the entire ground floor, until Mulcture Hall towered high above the ancient buildings and left them behind. 

Ignoring Felix, who was unconscious at her feet, and Kasper, who was groaning in a heap against the wall, and Rima, who was still crying over her pet, Harriet stepped from room to room of the buildings, peeking into squat cottages with straw covered floors; humid barns full of farm animals; cold stone storerooms. In each room, ghosts were frozen in place like statues. They were old – older than anyone else in halls, with old fashioned clothing and strange hairstyles.

It was only when she caught sight of the psychic, curled up in the position she’d been in when Harriet had stolen her energy, that Harriet realised where she was. 

She was in the After. The psychic had given her the power to enter the After.

Immediately, she started working out how she could use this to her advantage. The minute she returned to reality, she would need to fight the others. Was there a way she could use the After as a weapon?

She ran her mind over everything she’d been told about the afterlife. She’d only ever used the After once, when she’d asked Jonesy to find out what her power was from her grandfather. She didn’t even know how this place worked. 

Jonesy had said that she could make these people – these frozen snapshots of ghosts – speak to her, if she touched them. But what use was that? She needed a weapon, not a conversation. 

Harriet reran her mind over her last thoughts, certain she’d missed something obvious. Something about the After. The After, and her grandfather. 

Hadn’t she heard Jones say something about him, in a conversation she’d overheard whilst invisible? Jonesy had spoken to her grandfather in the After. He had warned Jonesy that Harriet could never be allowed to find out what her true power was. That was why Jonesy had refused to let her use the black market.

She had to find her grandfather. She had to hear what he had to say. How ever many powers she obtained, it never stopped the craving for more. Maybe finding her own power would fix that. She would be sated, at last. 

Her grandfather had died in hospital, so she had to find her way there. Jonesy had said that she could travel anywhere in the After, because it was all in her head. In reality, she was still in the entrance hall of Mulcture Hall, frozen in place, invisible. 

She moved slowly through the After. The air was so thick with sleeping ghosts that it was like wading through thick treacle. It felt like a dream – but it was different from any dream she’d ever had before; nothing like the usual familiar oddities her subconscious usually created. It felt foreign and unimaginable. 

The crowds of ghosts never thinned. On the way to the hospital alone there must be millions. The entire history of the human race was waiting here, frozen in time. There was the largest army in history here, just waiting for a leader to command them. 

The ghosts were thickest in the E.R. The fog of bodies was so dense that she couldn’t make out individual features, or match limbs to bodies. She swam through it as much as she could, but eventually she reached a point where she couldn’t move any further. The mass of bodies was just too thick. 

Grabbing at shoulders and heads, she levered herself out of the crowd, climbing upwards like she was surfacing from the ocean. Crowd-surfing across the heads of the ghosts, she crawled forwards, peering down and checking every face for her grandfather.

She could feel him. There was an itch under her skin, directing her to the person she needed. He was close by. 

Her parents must be here somewhere too, but she didn’t want them. Her mum and dad had given up their energy early, passing into the After before their powers had manifested. It was only her grandfather who had been strong enough to stay as a ghost. He was the only one who knew about her power.

She reached down into the fog, pushing away bodies until she found him. 

He looked younger than she remembered. In her head, he had aged like her grandmother, growing older and older in her memory as she did in real life. But he had died a decade ago. There was still brown in his greying hair. 

Climbing down beside him, she touched his cheek, rough with stubble and creased skin. “Wake up.”

He opened his eyes, and studied her. 

“Harriet,” he said. 

“Grandfather.”

It had been a long time since she’d given more of passing thought to Alan Stoker. Even his death hadn’t hit her hard: at the time, the news of her parents’ deaths had taken all of her grief. If she’d thought of her grandfather at all, it had been with fury that he’d been driving when the crash happened. That maybe he could have saved them.

But now she looked at his frozen features and wondered. What was he like? 

“What are you doing here?” he asked, eyes flickering from her torn eyelid to the wounds Rima had inflicted, across her shoulder and down her arm. 

“I need your help.” 

“You sent that girl to ask about your power,” he said. “I told her how it works. It’s easy enough. I can show you, if you want.”

Harriet ached for it. “Please. Please.”

“I can’t do it here. You’ll have to take me back with you.”

“I can do that?”

He took her hand. “Close your eyes and wake up. Pull me with you. It’ll hurt, I imagine. But don’t stop.”

Harriet looked him over, considering. There was something eager about him. 

Why was he here, in the After? A decade wasn’t enough time to have used up all his energy, surely. What had made him disintegrate? 

It didn’t matter. He could show her how to find her true power. He could help her. She closed her eyes, and pulled him back into reality. 

If she’d had even a little less energy, she wouldn’t have made it. It burnt inside her as she fought to pull him through the barrier between the After and reality. On fire, she dragged her way through blades of ice, an impossible weight pressing in on her from all sides. 

The laws of the universe fought against her. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she realised as her ribs cracked and collapsed, grinding into dust. She was breaking every rule. The barrier resisted her, forcing her back.

But Harriet needed this. 

She wriggled, and screamed, and her grandfather squeezed her hand, urging her onwards; not just eager, but desperate. 

When they broke free, falling to the ground of the foyer in Mulcture Hall, she curled up in exhaustion. 

Her powers were gone. She could feel the empty space where they had been inside her. There was nothing left. The barrier had burnt up her carefully obtained powers of invisibility, emotional manipulation and communication with the After. All gone. 

This had better be worth it. 

Beside her, her grandfather shifted. He groaned, long and low. 

He shifted, rolling his shoulders, tilting his head from side to side. He was glowing with burns. Boils burst as he moved, dripping mucus.

“Thank you, Harriet,” he said, then reached out and snapped her neck.


End file.
